


Serendipity Ain't All Its Cracked Up To Be

by harrietscats



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Alternate SBURB Session, Alternate Universe - Different Kids, Alternate Universe - Different Trolls, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 14:09:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/610656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harrietscats/pseuds/harrietscats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years in the past (but not many) four friends met on the internet. One's a boy who likes spiritual retreats in the middle of the mountains of Tibet. One's a girl who hasn't met a firewall she can't break. One's a boy who likes to fix people and wants to do it for a living. One's a girl who loves the stars and has three weeks left of personhood. Now, they play a game that will both make and break them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Serendipity Ain't All Its Cracked Up To Be

Serendipity Ain’t all it’s Cracked up To Be

_ACT I_

_CHAPTER I_

 

The moon is hazy above your head. It is a waxing gibbous that shines clear and bright behind a haze of clouds, irritatingly obstructing your view of the stars. That’s the whole point you’re up here, after all. You wanted to see the stars, and now the fucking weather is interfering with your much needed down time. Not that you don’t have an overabundance of it now. You’re practically bleeding downtime from your veins. Each time you exhale into the frosty night air, excess down time flies free of its fleshy prison to join the vast collection of down time to be allocated to those less fortunate than you.

You blink then, and the haze clears for a brief moment, before slowly encroaching back to cover the stars in its filmy embrace. Puzzled, you feel your face contort in a frown.

 _Huh,_ you think. _Maybe I’m a bit more bollixed than I originally thought._

Beside you, your computer lets out a tinny, insistent ping that goes right to your brain. With a lazy loll of your head, you rest your eyes on the insistently flashing icon in your taskbar. The colour is an insistent yellow that mesmerises you for a brief moment before it penetrates your drunken mind that _hey, you’re being Pestered._

Instead of answering, you blindly grope for the neck of the quarter-full bottle of Jameson and take a swallow with yet another lazy loll of your head. You wince past the bright hue of your screen (when the fuck did it get so damn bright?) and click the blinking Pesterchum icon in tandem, choke a little on the glorious fire, and stare at the dark red words plastering your screen.

\-- chieflyDoctoring [CD] began pestering drunkenAstronomer [DA] at 03:21 ! --

CD: so it’s just after eight o’clock here. How drunk are you right now

You blink confusedly at the red letters before glancing back at the nearly empty bottle clutched tight by the neck in your fisted hand. It had been half full when you had pulled it out of the liquor cabinet and clamoured up to your pitched roof with a blanket and laptop. That had been at least three hours ago. Or was it four? Fuck, you don’t know...

The keys swirl beneath your gaze so you put your fingers down (wait wait wait, put the bottle down first...) and hope for the best.

DA: I dunno. enough to mmstake waxing fr waining and make a shittonne of tipos.

Well, upon future reflection, that could have been worse.

CD: are you in alcohol poisoning territory? Because I’m a bit too far away to come and force charcoal down your throat

DA: Pfffffffffft. no self-respectying Irishwomann fears alchohol poisoning.

When he doesn’t reply after a few seconds, you gaze skyward, raise a dallying finger, and trace Ursa Major with the tip of your finger. Even drunk, you know the stars better than yourself. It’s not exactly something to be proud of, but it’s something you’re pretty goddamn proud of. At eight years old you could name the closest stars to Earth, dumfounding your teachers and skyrocketing you into the advanced classes with your freakish ability to disgorge information sponged in from your stupid primary school textbooks.

You just barely notice Pesterchum’s incessant blinking as _chieflyDoctoring_ futilely tries to attract your attention again. You know you’re nowhere near alcohol poisoning—maybe a tenth of the way at most—but you find it absolutely heart stoppingly adorable that your best internet friend in the world is concerned for your wellbeing. Maybe you should humour him...at least a little bit.

CD: i swear to god if you die i’ll do the unforgivable. 

** CD: iona i will pee on your grave **

CD: iona cooper i will urinate on your grave and laugh as i do so.

CD: you will go to whatever heaven is up there soaked in my pee. And when St. Peter asks you why, you will say, “Oh St. Peter. I was the biggest douche on the face of the planet, so my friend did the unforgiveable and, not only buried me next to the enemies of my family, but pissed on my grave.”

Oh hell no. On a scale of Fuck No Not Okay to Utterly and Totally Unforgiveable in Every Single Pre-existing, Existing, and Universe That Shall Ever Exist, that is an Unforgiveable Fucking Sin. Your face pulls itself out of its happy little grin and twists into a snarl that you can feel (it’s amazing what you can feel with your face when you’re drunk) at the open window and quickly type out a reply:

DA: If you pisss on my grave, I will tell St. Petr to fuck off an haunt your scrawny arse until I drve you to insnitity

CD:  oh good you’re not dead. Do me a favor and watch it? i don’t want to freak out and buy a plane ticket to nowhere, ireland and find out you’re perfectly fine. Because then I’ll really kick your ass. 

You smile again, a little satisfied that no, he’s not going to piss all over your grave, and sigh, relaxing from your half-sit up until your back is once again on the roof and you stretch out beneath the blanket. The blanket is only for carrying your shit up to the roof. Too many times have you dropped your laptop or mobile or (God forbid) your precious whiskey on the ground. However, It is a chilly seven degrees out and, beneath the thick knit you’re clad in a long-sleeved striped shirt of black and green and warm black pants. Your feet are bare because you’ve learned that it’s easier to climb up the roof with your toes searching for purchase than obstructed in socks.

CD: robb’s been on my ass about that new beta that came out. Have you heard of it?

You think hazily back to your IGN newsfeed, trying to grip your miasmic thoughts tight, but they’re having none of it tonight. You may be drunk ten out of twenty-four hours, but you know your shit when it comes to video games. Too many days were spent with a six pack of Guinness and a headset connecting you to your best friend five hours behind as you slaughtered the competition.

But your alcohol soaked brain is tired of thinking too far past “The hell did I put the parcemetol again?”

DA: Sorry feellla. I’m drawin a big oll blank. What beta is thes?

Seconds drag by. Minutes. Maybe even hours. You can practically feel his irritation reaching you from far across the Atlantic Ocean. It makes you hunker down in your blanket and scowl at the too-bright screen, narrowing and squinting your tired and watery eyes in a futile attempt to make the goddamn words focus and stop their magical acrobatic fucking pirouettes. Your neck is beginning to ache from its position so you turn onto your side, letting out a grape-and-alcohol scented belch as the sloshing liquid in your stomach threatens to make a repeat performance.

** CD: you are seriously that drunk? Everyone with three brain cells to rub together has been going on and on about it since Wikileaks got its hands on it. but then again you don’t have three brain cells to rub together. They’ve all gone to the booze. **

A smirk graces your face as you take a glance up at the night sky.

DA: On 4 July, physiciscists observd a particle phenomenena thaat resembbled in part the proposed idea of peter Higgs n 1964. Thi partice is te missig piece of he Standard mpdel, whych dedcribes thr buildimg blocks of the universe. It can solve soooooo many thigns revolvin arund motion of celestiial boddys and oh god i’m flailing

Well, you’re not quite flailing but you’re excited. You’ve been bouncing around the house with a skip in your step that had your mother wondering if you had finally reached your Final Resilient Flicker since the news had been announced. However, there’s something wrong with that sentence.Despite the multitudes of typos and hypnotically swirling words, you finally decide with an astute definitiveness that what you’ve just said doesn’t coincide at all with what Downey said

DA: Wowm. I’m fucking drunk, ain’t i.

CD: wow, really? I didn’t notice. you seem totally sober right now. Holy shit you’re ability at hiding your intoxication is staggering. i must be in the presence of a master.

That sends off little warning signs in your brain. And no, it’s not strictly because you’re starting to taste half-digested dinner on the back of your tongue. You slowly scroll back through your chumLog, not pandering with pressing the helpful little ARCHIVE button because it’s not worth it at the moment. Your meandering peek through your pester with chieflyDoctoring comes to an end somewhere towards the beginning of the night. The liar! The filthy liar! How could he lie to his favouritest drunkennest bestest friend?! Your stomach does a little flip that has nothing to do with your anger and something to do with the ratio of alcohol to food in your stomach.

DA: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiit. You sad thst I was nearing alcohohol  psiniong.....oh god i’m gonna hurl

And you do. You lean over the side of the roof and relieve the contents of your stomach all over the beautiful bushes your mother has planted in the backyard. The smell hits you several seconds later, after the last vestiges of dinner and liquor have left your body—half-digested meatloaf and alcohol—and you vomit again, stomach heaving and rolling and aching with a pain you haven’t felt since you drank for the first time when you were fourteen and lost it after the second shot.

When you feel that your stomach has sufficiently turned itself inside-out, you crawl back to your abandoned nesting place on the roof while reminding yourself that you’re not crawling because Iona Cooper does not crawl. Nor does she beg for that matter. She would rather gargle the excrement of a hundred cows than admit defeat.

...When the high holy fuck did you start talking about yourself in the third person?

Ten pesters await your ardent return when you finally drag your internally dissected carcass back onto the blanket and collapse into its warmth. You feel disgustingly hung over and decidedly not drunk any more (the words are in shocking clarity and have ceased their pirouettes and have now begun to make your eyes hurt), but you don’t want to reach for your abandoned whiskey bottle because you feel That Bad.

CD: are you alright?

CD: i’m assuming since you haven’t replied in five minutes you’re vomiting your brains out

** CD: do you need me to call your mother? **

CD: you’ve passed out over the lip of the roof, haven’t you?

CD: i swear if you’re currently falling off the roof i’m dialing 999. I can already imagine the call. “999 what’s your emergency?” “Yes I’m currently located in Macon, Georgia. I’m calling on behalf of my drunk ass friend who’s probably fallen off the roof of her home by now after vomiting the contents of her stomach over it.” 

CD: seriously i’m about to dial 999

CD: my finger is literally on the call button

CD: if you don’t reply in five seconds i’m pressing it

CD: iona don’t test me

CD: IONA COOPER

You need to shut him up. You need to shut him up this fucking instant. You don’t even look as you smash your hand down on the keyboard, hoping—and maybe praying—that a solitary tip of a finger hits the ENTER key.

Apparently some deity is smiling down upon you, for when you look up through half-lidded eyes, a single reply from you graces PesterChum:

** DA: ugvphjuuyiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii **

That seems to satisfy him. A few minutes later, a reply pings in, making your skull vibrate and urging the vomit receptors in your brain to fire again.

CD: oh good you’re not dead. Do me a favor and climb back down into your bedroom. leave your shit on the roof and just get into bed. 

DA: Aw you care. Oh god I feel like shit. I seriously think I’m about to vomit up the remainder of my stomach. Fuck the contents and the lining. That’s currently kipping on top of Mam’s hydrangeas. 

Huh. That was impressive. Not a typo in sight and you sound completely sober. Gold star to you, Cooper.

CD: that’s what you get for drinking. Just get down into your bed, curl up with your embarrassing raggedy bear plush and count the stars you painstakingly painted on your ceiling to show your mother you seriously wanted to get into Oxford. don’t die by falling drunk off of a roof.

You sigh and type type I’ll tell you when I get back into bed and shut your laptop with a definitive snap. Painstakingly, you stand, unkink your back, and place it in the middle of your blanket, followed by the nearly empty whiskey bottle, and bunch it up. You knot it once and sling it over your back cross-body, whining like a kicked dog as the motion hurts your stomach. Carefully, you hook your fingers on the edge of the roof and let your body drop in a way that would have had chieflyDoctoring clutching his heart in fear. Your bare feet tingle in the cold air, and you stretch your toes earthward until you touch the very top of your window, then close your eyes and let go with your hands.

There’s a brief moment of freefall as your hands and feet go out from beneath you and gravity clutches your organs and makes you want to vomit, but you don’t. You love this bit. You love the sensation of adrenaline coursing unhindered through your veins, making you feel like a real person again.

You haven’t felt like a real person in a long, long time.

You’re fully content to fly forever, keep that gravity feeling in your belly for all eternity, but you know you need to snap your hands out and catch the window ledge before you’re meeting the ground feet- (or arse) first and breaking something important, or ending yourself prematurely.

So your hands snap out and grip your window sill, bringing you to a painful, jerky stop that sears up your arms and neck. Your shoulders protest and stomach heaves and you lean over your left side to spit grape smelling bile on the already puke-soaked hydrangeas below. You hate being sober. You know, deep in your heart, that if you were drunk, you would have flipped like the half-crocked acrobat you are and done an acrobatic fucking pirouette, catching the sill feet first. But no. Your sober arse is hanging from your window sill by the tips of your fingers, legs pinwheeling in the air for purchase that your bare feet can’t seem to find quite yet.

This is the part you decidedly hate the absolute most about sneaking back into your own house.

With a groan, you plant your feet shoulder-width apart and shimmy upward, feeling yourself beginning to sweat with exertion. You feel your hands slide from the sill to the frame until you’re able to settle your weight lightly on the lip of your sill, white-knuckled hands clutching the white frame of your window like a lifeline. Your arms burn. Your shoulders burn. Your thighs burn. You’re straddling your window like a two euro whore and it physically hurts you to pull up on your window’s latch. You furrow your brow and grumble as it gives. You must be coming down with something, that’s the only reason for your sudden lethargy.

Gripping the window sill tight with your thighs, you shove your window open all the way and toss your bundle into your room, where it lands with a glassy thump directly in the centre of your unmade bed. You then slide in, releasing the window and somersaulting once (neither acrobatically nor pirouettally) before falling flat on your back with a pained _oof_.

You landed on a pile of papers—star charts and equations and a still unfinished painting of the Aurora Borealis curtaining the Milky Way. You can feel the tackiness of half-dry oil against your back and you groan with frustration. Twenty-nine straight hours on nothing but coffee and Bailey’s down the drain and you fight the urge to sob in frustration.

That stops you. You tilt your head a little to the side and study your ceiling in the dim half light. Huh. Maybe you’re still a teensy bit drunk after all. You usually aren’t one to gallivant your emotions around like a show pony at the county fair.

Finally you stop wallowing in self-pity and maybe a tad of self-hatred long enough to climb to your feet and stagger the last few metres to your bed, where you collapse face down (somehow avoiding the bundle containing several extremely hard and painful objects that would hurt if they make contact with your face). You have all intentions of falling asleep until the sun pierces your window in another three hours and makes you vomit for a third time this morning, but the insistent pinging of your mobile has you twitching dangerously close to the edge of nervous breakdown.

_TEXT MESSAGES—6_

_FROM—MATT DOWNEY_

_i swear to god i waste too much time on your drunk ass. I should come out there and kick your scrawny rear. scratch that i should tan the damn thing until you can’t walk. Maybe then you’ll learn not to leave your best fucking friend hanging here when he can be keeping your stupid ass in line. you are so damn lucky i’m three thousand miles away from you and can’t beat you over the head with your precious whiskey bottle. Go grab some Tylenol or whatever painkiller you have in the house, drink a metric fuckton of water, and sleep for a century and a half_

Again, you feel the obsessive need to shut him the fuck up this very instant. You groan loudly, type out a reply blindly — light hurts your eyes, and you hate every second of reading the tiny lettering on your mobile:

_I was unaware that scientists now use the term “metric fucktonne” as a unit of volume._

Blessed silence at last. You can hear yourself think, but just barely. With a contented sigh, you allow whatever tension remains in your spine and shoulders and everywhere to go...

Whatever deity had smiled down upon you for your journey down the side of your house has vacated the premises. Your yearly number has been drawn and your five minutes of grace are up. He replies back a few minutes later, and you can barely stop the angered cry that passes your lips. Your head is pounding—not hangover pounding, but honest to god pounding of another hellish nature altogether—and you can just barely wrap your sanity around the absolute agony of reading the screen. You are about ten seconds away from putting your head through a wall just to make it stop.

_of course that’s what you would latch on to. The great Iona Cooper needs to get her science giggles in for kicks. i wonder why i put up with you_

You stare at that last sentence for the longest while, despite the fact that the light piercing your eyes feels like a thousand million needles lodging in your brain, despite the fact that you’re tired and cranky and hungover. Dozens of replies are travelling through your aching brain, varying from the speed of molasses to the speed of light. _Because you’re my best friend. Because you care differently than my mother. Because I can feel it eating me alive and I don’t want to die._

Instead you curl up on your side and leave the text unanswered. Matt Downey doesn’t need to know that your life has reached its final chapter and it ends in three weeks.

You choke on a lump in your throat and curl around your abdomen, fingers fisting your hair as if to pull out the golf ball sized lump of flesh residing in your brain by force. But no, you feel the tumour laugh and its friend in your pancreas chuckle and you fight the urge to vomit. A part of you urges you to wake your mam and get the painkillers that the doctor prescribed you when you had vehemently protested against one final round of chemotherapy ( _I’m already dead, Mam! I’m not going to live the last months of my life in a bloody hospital hooked up to a machine!_ ) but you keep quiet, quelling that smaller, more pliant side of your personality. You flip onto your back to gaze up at the ceiling and trace constellations. You remember when you had lain on your back and painted them with such aching accuracy ( _You had worn a pretty green headscarf that concealed your freakish baldness at the tender age of fourteen_ ).

But that was when the doctor had given you six weeks, not remission.

Now you lie on your back and clutch the fabric of your shirt above the organ that had turned your body into hell and fist your hair, still futilely trying to rip that tumour out and turn everything back to normal. The moon above your head looks so real—a super moon painted just above your bed—that if you really block everything out, it’s almost as if you’re on your roof again, and that’s just enough to bring you down from the rage and the anger and the depression.

The pain begins to fade, slowly at first, but then in one crashing wave that leaves you empty and unwhole, wrung out like a wet rag and tossed about to be forgotten. You sigh through your nose, enjoying the relief, the temporary reprieve that you know will only get shorter and shorter as your expiration date approaches, but now you can hear your mobile ringing in the forgotten bundle beside your head.

With a groan, you blindly reach over and open the offending device, accepting the call, already instinctively knowing who is on the other line.

“ _I swear you’re going to be the death of me,_ ” snaps Matt Downey.

You find yourself smiling softly and rolling onto your side, keeping your mobile pressed between cheek and bedcovers. The distinct Georgian twang of his accent is like a lullaby—you can feel yourself relaxing even farther into your quilt and sheets.

“Not if you’re the death of me first,” you reply, a sly smile gracing your lips.

“ _Not fair. I claimed the right of death by best friend when we met on that IGN forum._ ”

You smile at the barely concealed jibe. You had needed help with a PC game that no one had heard of before, and, after days of zilch, some boy in Georgia had been the first to respond, first by berating you for buying a defunct game, then by helping you debug your computer (which had led you eventually to Anja a few hours later). Then one thing led to another and you were exchanging chumhandles a few hours later.

That had been seven years ago.

Now you lay in bed, curled protectively around the organ that’s tried its damndest to kill you for coming on twenty months, listening to your best internet friend in the world rant and rave about your _“questionable mental state”_ and _“It’s fucking forty degrees out and you decided it’s a good fucking night for stargazing? What the hell!”_ until he falls silent after what seems like hours of mindless chatter and you’re stuck in that nether space of cybernetics and sound waves, reminding you of a book you had read a few months back. The only thing that’s different in this picture is that you’re the only one with cancer.

 _“Iona?"_ He finally asks after what feels like an eternity of nothing. _"Are you asleep?”_

His question is gentle, lulling you out of your half-awake funk.

“No,” you mumble, just as gentle. “Just drunk...” you choke on bile and wrinkle your nose. “Sorry. Scratch that. ’m hungover. Fecking hungover.”

He scoffs at that and you feel yourself scowl. “ _God forbid the great Iona Cooper be sober for one uncomfortable minute of her adolescence._ ”

“Even drunk I can kick your arse.”

“ _Oh? Intellectually or physically?_ ”

 _Even with a tumour the size of a bleeding golf ball in my brain I can crush you like a roach._ “Both.” You smirk and glance at your ceiling out of the corner of your eye. “And all that shit about beating my arse fifty shades of red? Is that a kink for you, Downey?”

He growls on the other line—literally growls—and snaps, “ _You never got your ass beat as a kid for pissing off your parents?_ ”

“Often. With a wooden spoon,” you deadpan.

You can _feel_ his eyebrow rise from the other side of the phone and you smile. You love getting him all pissed off and snarky and Southern. It makes you feel

So

Alive.

“ _Go to sleep, Ina,_ ” he says softly from the other side of the world five hours ago. “ _It’s nearly four there._ ”

You smile and yawn against your will. “Getting better on your time change, aren’t you, Downey? Only took you seven years.”

“ _Better than you think._ ”

You pause mid inhale. You can’t quite decipher the hidden meaning behind that—and goddamn you know there’s one there—so you wriggle out of your pants and strip off your shirt, pulling a dirty, but still clean smelling nightie from the floor. You sit up to squirm into it before thumping back down and pulling the bedcovers over your head.

“I’m about to ask you an odd favour,” you say after a moment, “and it’s going to sound a tad mad, but please say yes.”

The hesitation is brief, but it’s there. “ _Go on._ ”

“Just talk,” you mutter, feeling yourself flush in shame. “Talk until I go to sleep.”

He is silent for a while, and you rap your knuckles insistently on your head—despite the ache that stays after each repeated bonk—and groan at your stupidity. You should have never asked. Even for a seven-year old friendship, that was just a little too far over the line drawn in the imaginary playground dirt.. For God’s sake, you’ve never met him in person. You grumble under your breath and listen to the soft murmur of Matt on the other side of the world.

You stop and have to remember to breathe for a second because he’s actually doing it. He is whispering about everything and nothing. He tells you about the unseasonably cool weather and how it may ruin his aunt’s peach trees when harvest time comes around. He complains about the stupidity of his older brother—a big shot doctor in some hospital in Atlanta—and how he could solve half of his open diagnostic cases if he was given the chance. He tells you he was accepted into medical school and you smile and tell him “Brilliant”—your first uttered word—because it is. Your brilliant best friend—nearly as clever as you—will live to save lives and you let your eyes close.

Guilt briefly grips you as you think about telling him about the monsters in your head and belly but don’t. You know that when he’s older and heading a big department in a hospital, he will look at every oncology case and think of his dead friend who he never figured out was dying.

And that tears you up from the inside out.

So you listen to him talk about boats and how much he hates the water as you finally drift off into an uncomfortable, hazy sleep.

==>

The sun strikes your eyes at exactly seven-oh-nine and you start the day off by leaning over your bed to vomit into a strategically placed rubbish bin by the head of your bed.

Groaning, you roll off of your bed and grab the puke-splattered bin in passing as you wobble your way to the bathroom just down the hall outside your door. . You shut your eyes against the artificial lighting as you enter the bathroom, dumping the bin in the bath and opening the medicine chest to take your pills for the day.

You had never realized how many there were until you decided to count them three weeks before your original expiration date. One tiny blue, three oblong yellow, two circular white, and one rhombic neon orange falls into your slightly cupped hand, as if they have always belonged there, stark and alien against your sickly pale palm.

However, your daily regimen doesn’t hold your attention for too long. Your eyes stray to the small bottle of ovular green that waits patiently on the top shelf, hidden carefully behind a few bottles of Vicodin and Amoxicillin, but you know it’s there. It’s too soon to take those, you think as you down your seven pills with a healthy gulp of water. No matter what you may think in your weakest moments, the green pills are for The End, and you’re still far from it.

Running a hand through your hair, you shut the cabinet and risk gaze at your reflection. You don’t quite remember what you looked like pre-diagnosis—it’s all just flashes of a rounder face and healthier skin tone now—but you now look like those girls with cancer you used to watch on those doctor shows before your mother put a stop to them. Your face is gaunt and thin, all angles and dominating cheekbones made more prominent by your drastic fluctuation in weight. Your eyes—so dark they’re nearly purple—are sunken into your skull, glazed with sickness. You rub at your face, counting the splatter of freckles across the sharp slope of your nose like stars, and run your hands through your hair this time, making it stick up at all angles. It’s relatively short, maybe reaching below your prominent clavicle, and would look almost pretty if you brushed it (which is never).

You look so pitiful that you want to cry.

Instead you growl at your reflection, teeth bared in warning. There’s a flash of satisfaction as your ravaged mirror self reflects the scowl back at you, and for one brief moment you picture yourself healthier, glaring down this sickly doppelganger. “Yeah,” you hiss, watching chapped lips mimic you, “that’s right. You’re not winning.”

But the monster in your belly and its cohort in your brain choose that moment to laugh at your self-reflected bravado.

When you resurface from the shallow sink, you storm out of the bathroom (just remembering to wash out the sink on your way), monstrously hungover and dying and dress yourself. You’ve become a fan of the long tee-shirt dresses because of their ease of removal (cancer has opened your eyes to the multitudes of inventive fashions by which you could soil yourself in public), so you don a long sleeved black one. Black makes you paler and gaunter than you care, but, like the tee-shirt dresses, black has its pros (again you think back to the soiling). The final piece is a wide patterned shawl, dark green knots on lighter green. You fold it in half and wrap it around your waist, knotting it and heading to your desk, snapping up your laptop from its blanket prison as you do so.  

Your mobile sits on your bed, still warm from your cheek the night before, but you’ve forgotten it for the moment as you sit at your desk and boot up your laptop. Your open Pesterchum window from the night before is still there, but you exit out and click on your web browser, typing into your search engine the thing that had been bothering your tumour-ravaged brain through your disturbed sleep.

**NEW BETA PC WIKILEAKS**

Your browser immediately directs you to the Wikileaks article in question (thank you, Hephaestus)—it is lengthy and you only skim over it because the medication still hasn’t kicked in and it’s a chore to keep one eye open at one time. One thing halfway down the article catches your half-lidded eye, however: a house divided in unequal sevenths, under which is written a single word in some unholy amalgamation of Comic Sans and Arial:

SBURB.

You arch your eyebrow at the odd name choice _(Why does it sound so familiar?)_ and open a fresh Pesterchum window, clicking on the only highlighted name available— _tokenThermomonkey_

\-- drunkenAstronomer [DA] began pestering tokenThermomonkey [TT] at 7:34 ! -- 

DA: What did you tell our southern gent about SBURB?

TT: joh-eun achim to you too. my little irish lady, my day has been fine so far thank you for asking,

You sigh and resist banging your head on the table. Damn pleasantries, you need answers. You reply::

** DA: Haha funny. My apologies for upsetting your delicate not really Asian sensibilities. Now can you please tell me what you told Matt? **

TT: sburb correct? youre lucky. for i have been priorly informed of its release and have successfully managed to snag a few copies for you. matt. and anja, 

DA: You still haven’t told me what it’s about.

TT: thats the thing. coops, no one knows what its about, wikileaks. ign. gamefaqs, no one knows what sburbs cooking,

You grumble to yourself and rub your forehead with both hands.

DA: You haven’t asked Anja to investigate? She’s got some serious KGB worthy hacking style.

TT: you insult me, of course i asked out little romanoff or svetlana or whatever she likes to be called, she got locked out before she even reached their tertiary firewall,

DA: Fuck.

TT: my sentiments exactly, might i suggest we play the game on our own? the only solid facts wikileaks dug up was that players compete in a session. so thats perfect for the four of us,

The invitation is tempting (it really is), but with three weeks hanging over your head like an anvil from those cartoons you used to watch, you seriously doubt you’ll be able to complete the ‘session’ before you’re blind or comatose or not breathing (which would seriously put a dampener on gaming spirits, you hypothesize). Your sense of smell has already left the building like Elvis, so everything else is not far behind. But you don’t want to alarm anyone—denying a beta is like throwing up a red flag, a flag you had carefully dyed white and waved above your head.

DA: Sure. I haven’t kicked a game’s arse in months. When are we supposed to get your mail?

TT: you all should get it today, at least i hope you will get it today, tell everyone to contact me when theyve gotten the game,

DA: Will do, Captain Not-Asia. Any passing requests?

TT: yeah, tell georgia peach he owes me 50 american dollars,

Furrowing your brows, you search for a currency converter and do the math. Even with the number floating before you, you have no idea what it correlates to in Robb’s eyes.

DA: What are you going to do with 413 Renminbi?.

TT: is that all its worth?

DA: It looks like it.

TT: oh damn him, ill be sure to get him back at a later date. most likely in the game, dont forget now!

\-- tokenThermomonkey [TT]  ceased pestering drunkenAstronomer [DA] at 7:56 ! -- 

You slide down in your seat and stare blankly at your computer screen, rubbing at your head after a few aimless minutes because goddammit it aches like hangover and cancer had a party (which is exactly what happened). It’s still too early for your mother to be up, or for Downey to be on, so you focus on your now unoccupied screen and trace entropic patterns on the wood of your desk. It’s relatively empty of clutter, not counting a handful of leisure books and an acceptance letter for Oxford (you haven’t had the chance to deny yet, because you won’t be here in four months). You’re about to open a new document to do exactly that when another Pesterchum window opens on its own volition.

\-- hackmasterCubed [HC] began pestering drunkenAstronomer [DA] at 8:01! --

HC: Ионы вы не поверите, что это черт гайки Робб попросил меня сделать!

You can’t help it. Your head descends upon your desk with a solid thwack as curse your friend (and curse the flare of pain behind your forehead). You are fully convinced that Cyrillic is the lovechild of Satan and gibberish—it doesn’t resemble anything you have ever seen written before—and it is notably the only thing that scares the everloving shit out of you because _what hell-sent linguist would develop a language that has a fucking **trident** in it._

DA: Anja, you’re typing in Cyrillic again. Cut it out before you give me a heart attack.

HC: fuck You, i. Cyrillic is The most Superior language. But seeing As you Are painfully Constrained by Your pitiful And boring English, i Will deign You worthy Enough to Respond to In your Boring ass Language.

DA: I feel so blessed. Is it too late to make any “in communist Russia” jokes, or did I miss my cut off?

HC: it Is officially Noon here, So unfortunately You missed Your blatantly Racist joke Block. feel Free to Check back Tomorrow.

DA: Yeah yeah yeah. Can you translate your original statement please? My head hurts too much to copy that into a translator and it’s scaring the shit out of me. 

HC: Iona you won't believe what that fucknut Robb asked me to do!

DA: You ran that through Google Translate, didn't you?

HC: but Of course Since you Are too Lazy to Do it Yourself.

DA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I already had that conversation with him. You seriously couldn’t hack SkaiaNet?

HC: honey If i Tried any Harder, id Have an Aneurysm.

There’s a thump in the room beside yours, low enough to go unnoticed if you were on the phone, or otherwise occupied. You hold your breath for a minute, hoping (and maybe praying a little) that it’s just your mother turning in her bed. But it happens again, louder this time, and you curse under your breath. It’s still too early. What the hell is she doing up?

DA: Shit I need to go. Mam’s up. 

HC: you Alright?

You can feel your breath hitch in your throat. Several responses run through your mind lightning quick— _How do you know about the monster? Who told you? What do you mean?—_ but, like before with Matt, you type Perfectly fine. Robb wants you to Pester his arse when you get the gameand cease pestering Anja as soon as your mother walks into your room.

You have been told many times over the course of your preadolescence (and a little out of pity after you were diagnosed) that you look like your mother. You have the same thin, willowy build and dark blue-bordering on violet eyes, but that is where the similarities end as far as you’re concerned. She is slightly plump, with a round waist and ample chest. You are painfully thin, small-breasted, and lacking any definition lower than waist-level. Her face is still round and sanguine. Yours is drawn and pale as death. She is dressed in a cotton nightie and dressing gown and manages to look beautiful. You feel like the ugly duckling in comparison, despite being up hours earlier, despite her coddling and purposefully uplifting comments delivered for your benefit.

Behind you, you can hear your Pesterchum go off; you quickly orient yourself between your computer screen and your mother, crossing your fingers and praying to that deity that gave up your number last night to hold onto it for just a few minutes longer.

“Good morning, love,” your mother says with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. You feel a sharp stab of guilt at that—your mother hasn’t smiled since The Diagnosis. “Feeling alright?”

“Grand, Mam,” you say, low and slathered in what you’ve come to call the “illiterate stereotypical Irish trollop”. Your mother’s accent is refined and delicate from her work on the High Street and years of private schooling. Yours used to resemble hers until she pulled you out of school following your second descend and you had finally decided it wasn’t worth it anymore and scattered any given fucks to the four corners of the world.

Seven more pips go off. You smile painfully through each pip, hoping (and definitely praying this time) that your mother doesn’t question it. But of course, nothing ever goes to plan. Apparently that deity has given up your number for the year.

“Should you get that?”

“No, Mam. It can wait”

If your heavy ‘street-washed’ accent bothers your mother, she doesn’t let it show. She merely smiles gently and breaches the sanctity of your dwelling-space to brush your choppy bangs from your forehead and manually check your temperature at the same time. You used to enjoy the gesture, look forward to the sympathy. Now you resented it.

“You’re clammy. Have you been ill?”

“No.” The lie comes so easy you don’t even have to blink.

Your mother scowls ever so slightly but drops the subject. “Anything for breakfast then?”

“Toast and a cup of coffee?”

“Toast and a cup of tea.”

You groan beneath your breath, but you’ve lost this battle. Coffee is something reserved for your now nonexistent trips into Sligo, where your mother can’t nitpick your diet to the most minute calorie. And she wonders each night why you’re perpetually losing weight...

Well, despite the obvious reason.

Your mother finally leaves and you open the problematic Pesterchum window. There’s only three people in the entire world who could possibly need to get your attention you so badly. One is sleeping. The other is more than likely attending a spiritual retreat in the mountains of Tibet.

\-- hackmasterCubed [HC]  began pestering drunkenAstronomer [DA] at 8:18 ! --

HC: Хорошо, так мой брат только что сообщил мне, что есть Дух форума в особо сомнительные сайты с участием Почта того Жены и свободной "Немного использовали" вибраторы. Теперь, прежде чем сказать что-нибудь в этом разделе является sburban золотое дно. И когда я говорю золотая жила я имею в виду чертовски виртуальных золотых всему проклятое место.

HC: Так как вы, очевидно, не в данный момент, я буду Смелый этом форуме, то отправим вам ссылку. 

HC: По некоторым человека в Канаде Sburb это игра, песочница стиль, который каким-то образом накладывается в реальность. Есть два диска Содержится с каждой бета-версии: клиент и сервер. Однако я не знаю тонкостей этих дисков как г-н Канада исчезли. Мое предложение играть в игры. Мы можем расшифровать детали во время игры. Ох, и абсолютно тревожную Веб-сайт  <http://tinyurl.com/UGH>

HC: Fuck i Forgot you Hate my Language. for Your convenience I will Translate

HC: okay So my Brother has Just informed Me that There is A ghost Forum on A particularly Unsavoury website Involving mail Order wives And free ‘Slightly used’ Vibrators. now Before you Say anything This forum Is a Sburban goldmine. And when I say Goldmine i Mean fucking Virtualized gold All over The damn Place.

HC: since Youre obviously Not on At the Moment i Shall brave This forum Then I shall Send you The link.

HC: According to Some man In canada Sburb is A sandbox Style game That has Somehow been And i Dont know How superimposed Into reality. There are Two discs Contained with Each beta A client And a Server. however I dont Know The Intricacies to These discs As mr Canada has Abruptly disappeared.

HC: My suggestion Is to Play the Game. we Can decipher The details while Playing. oh And the Absolutely disturbing Website is http://tinyurl.com/UGH

\-- hackmasterCubed [HC] stopped pestering drunkenAstronomer [DA] at 8:28 ! --

Albeit tentative, you click the tinyurl link and are immediately bombarded with offers for free sex and invitations to disturbing underground nightclubs in the Sligo area. Quickly, you minimise the window and click a shortcut on your main desktop titled ALIVIRUS.EXE.

 

...RUNNING... 

 

...RUNNING...

 

...RUNNING...

 

NOW USING ALIVIRUS

 

CONGRATULATIONS YOU ARE NOW PROTECTED AGAINST UNSAVOURY PORN ADVERTS AND 

 

GOVERNMENT AGENCIES ATTEMPTING TO LOCATE YOU

 

DO NOT USE WITH OUT ANJAS PERMISSION

 

OR I WILL BLOW YOUR SHIT UP

 

** POKA **

Almost immediately after the polite (that is polite for Anja, believe it or not) “Thank you for using ALIVIRUS” page automatically disappears from your background, the adverts for free sex and (damn Anja was right) ‘slightly used’ vibrators disappears. No one wants to meet you for sex in the Sligo area. No one wants to sell you a mail order bride from Vietnam or Korea. You sigh with relief and begin to scroll through pages of increasingly worsening grammar and answered propositions for sex that would put professional agencies to shame, or out of business.

Eventually you locate the post Anja had found. There’s little to say about it—she’s told you everything uncoverable about it, and if there’s anything Anja is, it’s proficient and thorough. Once you’ve decided that you’ve divined all knowledge from the site and can no longer process traditional English, you minimise the mind-scarring website and open another window in Pesterchum. Damn the hour, you need to talk with Matt yesterday.

\--  drunkenAstronomer [DA]  began pestering  chieflyDoctoring [CD]  at 8:49 ! --

DA: Downey

DA: Downey

DA: Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey Downey

CD: are you dying

You’re tempted to answer yes to that, but you smile and reply:

DA: We’re all dying. Some are winning the game of Life faster than others.

CD: fuck you and your analogies.

DA: Nah, my analogies would rather fuck you

CD: did you pause to check your clock, dearest iona? Because it’s fucking 3:34 here and I’d like to do what normal humans do and SLEEP

DA: But this is important. Like monumentally so.

CD: again i ask: are you dying

DA: If I say yes, will you hear me out

CD: no

DA: Then yes. I am succumbing rapidly to stage three pancreatic cancer, which decided to give my precious brain a little “welcome to the neighbourhood” present in the form of a massive fucking tumour the relative size of a golf ball. I have approximately three weeks left of personhood, where then the aforementioned massive bleeding tumour will squeeze my brain matter down my brain stem and into my spinal column like someone squeezing a tube of toothpaste. 

DA: I can send you a video demonstration if you like. 

CD: fucking hilarious, ina. My sides are splitting. Do you mind not being a massive drama queen for one minute and tell me what the fuck is so goddamn urgent.

DA: Sburb.

\-- chieflyDoctoring [CD] stopped pestering drunkenAstronomer [DA] at 8:56 ! --

\--  chieflyDoctoring [CD] is now offline ! --

That doesn’t bode well for you. You sit back in your seat and glower at your friend’s darkened chumhandle, torn between calling him, lobbing your mobile out the window before the damage can be done, or sending him an extremely long apology pester. You consider pestering him again when your phone begins to ring, making your choice for you, and simultaneously digging your grave while it’s at it. You don’t want to believe it, but when you scoot back on your desk chair and grab your mobile, the name on your screen confirms your incredulity.

_MATT DOWNEY_

Dear god, your fate is sealed. You are going to suffer in the darkest and deepest pit of hell when you finally die, but that is only after Downey has shouted you to your grave. He will grind the cancerous decay of your body to a halt as long as he can sufficiently torture you via eardrum rupture. Again you’re tempted to lob your mobile out the window, but that will only extend your torture in the special level of hell even longer. Tentatively, you hit answer and hold it a few inches from your ear.

Predictably, the shouting begins before you’ve even settled your mobile at a comfortable distance that would lower the risk of hearing loss.

_“WHAT THE FUCKING HELL IS THIS ABOUT, COOPER? I SWEAR TO GOD IF **I** EVER DID THIS TO YOU, YOU’D HAVE BEEN ON A PLANE HERE IN A NANOSECOND AND STRUNG ME UP BY MY THUMBS FROM THE NEAREST FUCKING TREE. BUT NOOOOOOO. WHEN MISS FUCKING COOPER NEEDS SOMETHING DONE, EVERYONE NEEDS TO DROP WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY’RE DOING AND ANSWER TO HER BECK AND FUCKING CALL! SO PLEASE, ENLIGHTEN ME WHY THE FUCK SBURB COULDN’T WAIT UNTIL A FUCKING NORMAL HOUR HERE?”_

His rant pauses and all that you can hear is his heavy breathing. All you can hear is him and the distinct ringing in your battered ear canal.

“I don’t like Sburb,” you blurt out. Before he can comment, you continue: “I mean, no one has _anything_ on it. Wikileaks, IGN, GameFAQS. No. One. No one even heard of Sburb up until the beta was announced. The company is fake, and I don’t like the idea of manipulating environments of my client or having my environment manipulated in turn.”

“ _Alright, just calm down,”_ Matt sighs. You didn’t realize that you had babbled out your argument in one long breath. You inhale a few times—your forehead is throbbing in time with your pulse—and you curl up like a roly-poly in your desk chair _. “Is that what Sburb’s really about? Manipulating environments?”_

“It’s a rumour. Anja found it on some ghost thread on a less-than-savoury forum, and I validated it to my best efforts. I’m not sure if I should believe it, but it’s the best we’ve got at the moment.”

_“Then the most we can do is wait for the discs to show up.”_

“There are two each.”

_“Oh?”_

You maximise the page again. It may be littered with typos and enough profanity to make even you blush to the roots of your hair, but you can decipher it easily enough. “Yeah,” you answer, finally deigning it safe enough to return your phone to the juncture of your cheek and shoulder. “A server disc and a client disc. The server allows you to connect and manipulate the environment of the person who holds your client disc and the client disc allows you to manipulate someone who has your server disc.”

 _“Complicated,”_ Matt says once you’ve finished explaining the nuances that Anja had relayed to you—first in Cyrillic, then in English—and you sigh. Complicated is an understatement. _“So we open up a group Pester and figure out who’s going to go with who.”_

“Yeah. Sounds like a plan.”

He’s quiet on the other side of the world, and you find yourself hesitating to speak. He beats you to it.

 _“All that stuff about cancer and dying...”_ He trails off, and you try to ignore your heart pounding away in your throat. _“You were kidding, right?”_

A part of you wants to say yes, just to get it off your chest because you know it will make you feel better. But then you remember what you told yourself once The Diagnosis happened: _Weather on, Iona Cooper, for you are steel. You are Iona Cooper. You do not beg, and you do not crawl_

So as you hear your mother announce that breakfast is ready, you smile and spit out the lie.

“Kidding, Downey. Only kidding.”

Without waiting for a reply, you press END and tuck your mobile away in the bottom most drawer of your desk where it can’t bother you. You leave ALIVIRUS running because one could never be too careful when it came to malware-riddled forums full of porn ads and prostitute call-lines and leave your room, heading downstairs towards the kitchen.

The kitchen in question is homey, full of original wood and flagstones and brick. There are a few cabinets and a stove and sink, and a door leading to the outside world that you haven’t seen in ages. Despite your confinement to the inside of your house, you have many a fond memory of meals eaten, arguments had, and conversations held in the early hours of the morning with your school friends. At least when you went to school.

Now it’s filled with the scents of percolating coffee, frying eggs, toasting bread, and the sweet scent of butter. It’s just enough to make the nausea in your stomach subside and your mouth water as you slide into the kitchen chair you have long since claimed as your own. You like this chair specifically because it’s situated between the kitchen stove and outside door. That way you’re never too warm or cold, and you can shift either one way or another if you’re feeling too much of one thing.

Your mother is in the way, so you can’t quite shift the chair to the right to get warm.

“Talking to your friends?” your mam asks from her position before the stovetop.

You arch your eyebrow. Since when did she care about who you talked to? “A little,” you say curtly.

She places a healthy helping of dry toast and a mug of tea on the placemat set in front of you. When she turns her back, you reach across the scrubbed wood table for the tantalising stick of butter. She doesn’t notice as you slather your first slice in God’s gift to mankind and take a healthy bite.

“How can you talk to your friends a little bit?” she asks.

You shrug, despite the fact that she can’t see you. “One’s currently sleeping. One’s probably hacking into the Pentagon or the KGB or some government agency for a laugh. The other’s more than likely meditating on an ice floe in the middle of the Himalayas.”

“Must make it hard to keep in touch with all of them.” Your mother is a bit dismissive as she sits across from you with her plate of eggs and hash and cup of percolated coffee that you want more than anything in the known world.

“Not really,” you say, equally as dismissive, if not more, as you take another bite. “It’s really easy if you catch them at the right time. We might not all be on at the same time, but we can all keep in touch fairly easy.”

Your mother nods. You hope this is the end of this hopelessly awkward conversation, but like before, no deity is looking down on you today.

“I ran into one of your friends from school the other day,” she says. “Kerri.”

You choke a little on your toast. “Kerri wasn’t my friend, mam.”

But your mam continues on as if she hadn’t heard you, “She wanted to know when you were coming back to school.”

You already know where this conversation is going. It’s gone this way far too many times before for the ending to change. You should know by now that you should just nod. Just say “Yes mam” and go back to your pathetic excuse of a breakfast.

But you are an angry, depressed, dying teenage girl, riddled with hormones. Your brain is not able to comprehend sense at the moment.

“I’m guessing I can go back soon?” you deadpan.

“Now Iona…”

“Oh not this again—”

“—you know you can’t go back. You just came off of chemo a few months ago and your immune system is still weak—”

“—Mam a few weeks of school isn’t going to kill me, cancer is!”

You always win these fights, but always by spiting your mother in the end. Her coffee freezes halfway to her lips and you have a feeling she would drop it if she weren’t so shocked by your outburst. Was she under the impression that you had been ignoring your upcoming expiration date for the past two weeks since the doctors had told you they could only “Make you comfortable”— _you’re dying for real now and we’re sorry for extending your lifespan and pain_ —?

Probably.

Without another word to your stunned maternal progenitor, you butter up the last few pieces of your toast, grab your cup of now lukewarm tea, and tromp back upstairs to the sanctum of your room.

You place your food on your desk and take a bite out of your toast.

It tastes of victory and bitterness.

With a sigh, you place it back down amongst its unmutilated brethren and slump down in your desk chair, staring at the polite (not exactly this time) ALIVIRUS warning that had long since flashed onto your screen.

 

YOU HAVE NOT USED YOUR COMPUTER IN 29 MINUTES 56 SECONDS 

 

ALIVIRUS WILL NOW SHUT DOWN BECAUSE YOU HAVE ABANDONED

 

IT TO THE WORLD

 

YOU HEARTLESS WHORE

 

THANK YOU FOR USING ALIVIRUS

 

...STOPPING...

 

...STOPPING...

 

...STOPPING...

 

*POKA*

The insult changes every time you forget to shut ALIVIRUS down, but it always manages to make you laugh. You’re convinced that Anja tailored it for you specifically (though you’re not sure your lungs could take it if Downey was called a “tampon applicator” in Russian).

As it disappears, you drain the last of your tea (now cold and disgusting but still drinkable) and roll over to your bed to drag the blanket off your bed. Exhausted, you drape it over your shoulders, roll back over to your desk, and allow your eyes to close.

==>

_The bed you’re laying on is obscenely comfortable. That’s the first thing you notice when you wake up._

_The second thing is the peculiar purple infused room you’re ensconced in. It is nearly identical to your corporeal bedroom in every single way. Your bookshelf is against the farthest wall, right beside your door, books organised by author and genre. Your clothes and loose books and astronomical charts are strewn all over the floor with no order and no categorization (you really should fix that when you wake up). Your desk is still clutterless and your laptop screen is bright, ready for you to search or type or bullshit around on the Internet. However, everything in your room, as you had noticed before, is purple. The hangings, the bed sheets, the walls and ceilings and all its contents that mark it as belonging to you are a dark shade of violet (the same colour as your eyes, you notice), as if someone had taken a paintbrush and slathered your room in the colour while you slept._

_That’s what clues you in to the fact that you’re dreaming._

_You slowly rise into a sitting position, cross your legs beneath you (you take in the single tone violet covers and pillows and wonder again why they’re so goddamn comfortable and so damn vivid) and, after a moment of intense incredulity and a few futile attempts to wake yourself up, you swing your legs over the edge and settle yourself feet first on the floor. It takes a moment for you to realize that the purple motif did not only apply to your surroundings, but to yourself as well. The clothes you had fallen asleep in are gone, replaced by a purple nightie and a dark purple button up, unbuttoned to expose the just barely visible lighter purple moon embroidered on the front of said nightie. Darker purple slippers are on your feet and you wriggle your toes in them, loving the warm feel of them. You’re so damn cold all the time now; it’s nice to feel warm again._

_You can’t help but look around, towards the window (which has curtains drawn tight across it) then towards the door (which doesn’t look locked, but hey. You never know). All you know is that you want to explore._

_You exit the room, skating down the tower stairs with your heart in your throat and adrenaline in your veins, all the while wishing that you could fly (after all this is a dream, so why the hell not?) because it would be so much easier than running down millions of flights of stairs._

_Almost as soon as the thought crosses your mind, one foot lands on one cold flagstone, and the other remains in midair, as if waiting for your other foot to join it. Which does happen after a long while of you cursing and attempting to regain your balance and simultaneously trying to get a handle on holy shit you’re halfway to levitating!_

_Eventually you decide to push off with your still earthbound foot, and for a moment you flounder a few inches off the ground. After a moment of levitating in a half sitting-half reclining position, you glance down at the innumerable flights of stairs that still lie between you and whatever lies below, and then back up to the bedroom door you know is there._

_That’s when a thought crosses your mind._

_An insane thought._

_Downey would throw a shit fit._

_But since when did you care what Downey did or didn’t throw fits of shit at?_

_So you propel yourself upward, taking corners at tight intervals until you burst through your bedroom door but don’t stop until you’ve blown through the curtains and have flown into nothing._

_Then you drop._

_The sight of nothing sucks the breath from your lungs._

_Sucks your scream from your mouth._

_Replaces it with a whoop of joy._

_Who knew that you would be skydiving without a parachute in a dream and enjoy it?_

_Not you._

_You glance down through your watering eyes at the spiral of purple (different than your room’s single toned paint job) racing up to greet you faster and faster but you don’t want to stop. This is better than those brief moments of freefall that you get when you drop from your roof to your window sill. If this is some medication-induced hallucination, you want more of it. You want to die like this._

_But not quite yet._

_You extend your arms and legs and will yourself to stop._

_And you do._

_You jerk to a stop with enough force to crush your organs into your front and give you whiplash. Still you let out a belting laugh, hysterical and loose and oh so free because that was amazing. That was fucking amazing and you want to do it again._

_Instead you drop slowly the last several metres to the ground, righting yourself in midair and touching down with your slippered feet. All around you are elaborate buildings of the same single toned purple, stores and shops and taverns and homes for whatever residence your subconscious has decided to populate your dreamscape with._

_Then you see one._

_And contemplate whether or not you should stop that medication._

_For the denizens that populate your dream city are dome headed, almost barrel shaped in the chest. Their arms and legs are narrow and undefined, leading off into skeletal hands and feet. The entirety of their bodies are covered in a hard black carapace, showing neither mouth nor nose, but a pair of beady white eyes that regard you like a curious specimen before it scuttles away, disturbingly humanlike in both form and gait._

_“Oh fuck no,” you say to the now empty street._

_Again you will yourself to float and shoot up into the sky, telling yourself that that was plenty of exploring for one day. Maybe two. Possibly even three. Four if you push it. You don’t stop until you’re seated on the edge of your window, staring into the blackness of space with naught but the cloudy blue planet occupying your field of vision, but even that was slowly fading away, disappearing to the right of you._

_When it disappears from view, you can’t describe the sensation that overcomes your body._

_You stop everything. Stop moving. Almost stop breathing, head tilted skyward (or what could be considered skyward). No longer do you register the cool stone beneath your arse. No longer do you wonder how you’re breathing on an atmosphereless moon populated by sentient, overgrown chess pieces._

_You're eyes have found nothing beyond the planet your moon orbits._

_There is nothing, you convince yourself._

_But you hear something in the nothing._

_It begins as a whisper at first, just below the edge of your hearing. After a few minutes of restless, bodiless mutterings that coalesce in your mind, it grows ever so slightly in volume, just enough so that you pick up a few words. They slither through your mind’s ear, into your brain, chilling your bones and rising goose pimples on your skin._

_...failure..._

_...inevitable..._

_...destruction..._

_...suffering..._

_...death..._

_You’re captivated, despite the terror that pumps through your blood and urges you to “Wake up, dumbarse! Wake up! Danger klaxon on maximum! Does not compute! Error 404! DANGER ARSEHOLE!!!”_

_But you don’t move. Not until that beautiful cloudy blue planet creeps back into your line of sight—from the left this time—and the voices fade from your head, taking its repeating track from hell with it, leaving you exhausted both mentally and physically. It takes all your strength not to slump forwards or back, so you sit on the now warm flagstones beneath your butt and stare blankly at the now filling night sky._

_You say you're fine. You think it with such force you’re nearly trembling from it. Drunks get horrendous night terrors when the end is near. How is this any different?_

_It isn’t._

_The thought both comforts you and enrages you. You’re not going mad, but you’re approaching The End faster than ever now._

_“Aw, don’t be motherfuckin getting your little pan all_ twisted and shit bitch.” 

_The voice floats musically through your room, lazy in inflection and containing only the slightest hint of a threatening lilt towards the end, where the voice had dropped to the almost inaudible level that the questionable monstrosities had communicated to you in. You glance downward towards the midnight city, then upwards toward the nothing sky filled with something. Then you invert yourself, peering through your curtains toward your room, which looks empty._

_After completing a cursory glance of your room (and wishing beyond all hope that you had done what Robb had said and properly outfitted your abstrata like a “normal person”), you finally tell your brain that no, there’s nothing to attack, and you relax ever so slightly._

_“You’re gonna wanna get your calm on,” the voice soothes, though it only serves to rattle your nerves further and now you’ve moved from wishing on to full blown berating (actually, it’s more of a Matt-sounding growl of “Why the hell didn’t you listen to goddamn Robb before something like this happens?!”). “Y’all don’t wanna go an motherfuckin wake yourself on up before_ I’m motherfuckin through with you, now. _Do you? Now how bout those pyjamas. Comfy as shit,_ ain’t they?” 

_Against your better judgement, you find yourself replying “So far they’re the only positive thing about this fucked up dream,” as you wriggle your fingers and unclench your hands, turning yourself around so your feet are no longer hanging over nothing, but so your toes are just brushing the floor. You can still feel the bite of your nails in the palm of your hands and that puzzles you, because you’ve never felt this lucid in a dream before. “Where am I?” you inquire to thin air._

_The voice is laughing now, full blown chuckles attached to a sound you can’t quite identify. “I’d tell you,” it giggles obscenely, “but after we get our motherfuckin talk on for a bit. You dig?”_

_You feel your face contort into a frown, but you stay silent. If your subconscious wants to do the talking, then you don’t have to speak._

_“Aw c’mon. Don’t be like that.”_

“Just for a little bit, motherfucker.” 

_You arch an eyebrow, then glance down at the city below. Maybe if you throw yourself off the edge..._

_“Ah ah ah,” taunts the omnipotent voice, in a tone that sounding that it were reprimanding a four year old. “Y’all don’t wanna up an’ motherfuckin do that now.”_

_“Oh?” You ask, voice taunting. “And why not?”_

“Cos you’ll up and motherfuckin die here, motherfucker.” 

_“That’s the general idea.”_

_“Then you can’t ever come back.”_

_You sigh, risking a final glance over the edge before you settle yourself against the edge of the window fully. “Alright then,” you say with doubt in your voice. “Then how the fuck am I supposed to wake up?”_

_The voice laughs again, and this time it grates on your nerves because you definitely hear something that sounds like a deflating tyre or broken bicycle horn in that laugh._

_“Like fuckin_ this.” 

==>

You wake up with a start to the sweet symphony of your mobile ringing and your mother calling your name. 

You hadn’t realized you’d dozed off in your desk chair (even though it was entirely on purpose at that point), and your neck creaks painfully as you straighten. You astutely ignore your mobile in favour of answering your mother, who is undoubtedly making her way up the stairs to make sure you hadn’t died in your sleep (which, by this point, is a distinct possibility).

“What?” you shout back before she can crest the second landing.

“I’m going into town for a few things,” she calls back. “Are you alright?”

You sigh and scrub a hand down your face. Not really, no. “I was just sleeping. I’m fine, _really._ ” You make sure to stress the really. At this point, it could mean the difference between the ability to move around like a free woman or be confined you your room for your last few weeks on Earth.

“If you’re not feeling well, I can send Mrs. McDowall to fetch the groceries.”

Oh no. Stressing the really didn’t work. Muttering a quiet, “Bollocks,” you slide out of your desk chair and sprint for your bedroom door, blanket flapping behind you like a cape. You want your mother out of the house in case the mail shows up so she doesn’t immediately take Sburb away from you, under some bullshite pretext of “Making sure you rest, love”. You lean over the banister and smile your widest smile at your mother, who is indeed nearly up the stairs by the time you intercept her.

“I’m _fine._ ” You stress the fine this time. Maybe that will work better in your favour. “Honestly. I haven’t felt this good in months.”

Your mother looks sceptical, but, after a few tense minutes that have you praying to some deity, she shoulders her pocketbook with a sigh. Your mind instantly switches to _Cheer ALL the shit_ mode because this means she’s given up. Your mother is vacating the premises for a blessed handful of hours.

I’ll have my mobile on loud,” she says, tossing a look back up at you as she retreats back down the stairs, “so call if you need anything. I can send Mrs. Flaherty over to sit with you if you feel like—”

“Go,” you all but whine, because in addition to not crawling or begging, Iona Cooper does not whine. “I swear to you on Nan Cooper’s grave I shall save the Squish for when you’ve got supper on the stove.”

Your mother is not at all pleased by your inevitable and rapidly approaching end being referred to as the Squish (even though that’s what it is after all). She raises an eyebrow and you can already feel your bum smarting from the flat of a wooden spoon. The only thing that’s saving you from a good thrashing is the fact that you have cancer (though, if you antagonize her enough, you have a feeling that excuse wouldn’t even be enough).

“I’ll be back by five,” your mother says, and you rush down the stairs to kiss her on the cheek. Before she’s even fully down the stairs and out the door you’re back up in your room with your mobile in hand, checking your missed calls even though there’s only about three people who could have needed to contact you with such urgency.

_MATT DOWNEY_

Of course it’s him. It’s almost always him nowadays. You almost don’t call him back but a quick glance at your clock and some quicker calculations has you pressing REDIAL with a tentative finger because why on earth would he call you in the early hours of the morning, Eastern Standard Time?

You get his voicemail—not surprisingly—and leave a message— _When I call you at three in the morning, it’s a bloody sin, but when you do it, it’s perfectly acceptable? I smell a double standard occurring, Downey_ —and move to your window to sit vigil for the arrival of the mailman before your mother returns from her undoubtedly rushed shopping excursion. 

==>

_The dream resumes where it had left off, except now you’re curled up on the floor right beside the window, the bright light from the planet your dream moon orbits falling onto your face. Slowly you climb to your feet and spare another glance out the window, throat constricting ever so slightly at the thought of “Holy shit I could’ve died in my dream sleep”._

_“Motherfucker y’all almost up an fell out the fuckin window,” bemoans the voice, as if your possible death was like having its favourite sweet removed from their possession. “Don’tcha know better than to tumble out those motherfuckin things?”_

_You bristle at that, whipping around with fists raised to confront the voice, despite your brain telling you that it might not have a corporeal body. You don’t care though._

_“Well,” you laugh, peering beneath your bed, resurfacing when you see nothing but nothing underneath. “That wouldn’tve been an issue if you hadn’t_ put me to fucking sleep without telling me! _” You pause, “Or woken me up! Whatever the fuck goes on in this shitty dream!”_

_The voice laughs raucously. “Well, that was motherfuckin fixed up quick, weren’t it, sis?”_

_You glare at the ceiling. “Oh fuck you. Why did you put me to sleep anyhow?”_

_“You’ve got some motherfucking monsters all up in your head, my purplest of dream sises,” she says (because the vocal lilt definitely sounds female to your ears). “I wanted to all up and get my look on when I got my realize on about them not doin their fuckin thing in your fucked up pan.”_

_“Voodoos?” you parrot back. You turn around to search your room again, but like before, there’s nothing there. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”_

_“Means that you’ve got some shit up there that’s fuckin blockin me out. Ain’t cool, sis. Ain’t cool.”_

_You furrow your brows and rub at your head, relieved that—for one precious moment—the constant ache behind your temples is no more. You wonder why it doesn’t hurt here. Wonder why you feel almost normal again, when the voice starts up it’s slurred speech once more._

_“Y’all are gettin your fuckin die on,_ ain’t ya?” 

_You nod. Feel terrible for a minute, then smile blandly. “What?” you inquire with false sweetness. “You here to tell me I’m dying? No fucking newsflash there. Or are you here to impart some great wisdom to me in my final weeks of life? Because I am fucking tired of pity and regret and false sympathies!”_

_The voice falls silent and you settle on your bed, thumping back so you can stare at your reproduced purple tinged mural on the wall. The silence is gorgeous. The silence makes your head clear. The silence is your closest friend now, far closer than Downey and Anja and Robb could be._

“Yes.” 

_The voice’s return makes you bolt upward in bed. “What?” you snap._

_“Y’all are gonna get your_ motherfuckin die on, _and I’m here to impart some fuckin wisdom into your_ blasphemous, monster-fucked pan. _So get your motherfuckin listen on,_ bitch. _Open those auriculars to the sick rhymes I break into your_ sick little fuckin pan, Iona Cooper. 

_“Your motherfuckin fate is sealed. Y’all have no choice in what’s gonna fuckin go down soon, my blasphemous meatsack sister. Y’all are gonna cry like a wriggler, beg for deliverance from the motherfuckin_ lyin, cheatin, fuckall _Messiahs, and_ you can’t do nothin about it. _You dig this, Cooper? You got your motherfuckin understand on here?_ Cos I ain’t all up an gettin my motherfuckin explain on a fuckin second time, motherfucker.”

_You can’t speak. The severity in the voice’s feminine tones has brought you to unending quiet. You release your hands from the bedspread, wincing as your nails retract from the broken skin of your palms._

_“You mean the Game, don’t you?” you say quietly, almost reverently. “SBURB, I mean.”_

_The voice laughs and hoots and hollers raucously again for the longest time, almost long enough for your brain to start begging for death early._

_“Of course I motherfucking mean SBURB. That cursed piece of shit ain’t worth nothin now, but you can’t avoid the shit once it’s been motherfuckin chosen._ You have been motherfuckin chosen, sis. _Now. Fuckin. DEAL. WITH. IT.”_

_“What do you—”_

“Nighty night.” 

==>

“—mean?”

You wake to your empty bedroom, the end of your sentence leaving your mouth before your eyes had even fully opened. Your forehead is throbbing and, vibrating loudly beside your ear (which you’re certain is going to thrust you forward into a psychotic break) is your mobile. With a pained groan, you reach blindly for the bane of your existence and strike the CALL ANSWER button with strictly more force than necessary. 

“What?” you snap, half hysterical. You have lost the capacity to give any fucks. You would give absolute zero fucks if the temperature of fucks could be properly measured with the current equipment available to the scientific community. You don’t care if it’s your mother or sweet Mrs. McDowall or the goddamn Pope himself on the other line. You are tired and snarky and goddammit all you want sleep.

“ _I got the game._ ”

That gets your attention. Immediately your sluggish, fogged over brain is cleared and you come to attention in your desk chair so fast your neck cracks. “It came?” you parrot, rubbing at the crick in your neck with nary a wince. “When? But—”

“ _The mail came a little after half an hour ago. It’s just after ten here—_ ” —” His explanation is interrupted when you hear a crash from below, of such force that it shakes the house. Almost absently, you hear a muttered, “ _Fuck, sorry about that,_ ” in your ear.

“Downey. What the hell was that.”

“ _Ah..."_ he says evasively. _"That may or may not have been your kitchen wall._ ”

“My kitchen—what?!” you splutter. You’re out of your chair and leaning out your window before the words have even left your mouth, staring down at the wall below you. Sure enough, there’s a gaping hole beneath you, right where your kitchen wall should have logically been. It is high enough that if you lean out the window and reach down, you can touch it. “Goddammit Matt, what the hell did you do?”

“ _I’m in the process of getting the hang of the controls,_ ” Matt explained. “ _I needed some room to deploy the cruxtruder, hence the reason for the removal of your kitchen wall._ ”

“...the what now?”

_“Cruxtruder. It’s one of the only things I can deploy without wasting what little build grist we have.”_

You pause for a moment and try to make sense of everything in your mind. “Take this slow, Downey. I just woke up from a nap.” You make your way over to your bed and drop to the floor beneath it, grabbing for your boots beneath your bed.

“ _Cooper,"_ said Downey slowly, as if he were speaking to a child. _"you, Aliyev, Hightower, and I have a combined IQ of 526. You can comprehend advanced particle physics with four-tenths of your brain working._ ”

“Well, let’s pretend I have one-tenth of my brain working and dumb this down for my sake, shall we?” You tug on your boots and scramble about your room, gathering your laptop and mobile charger and storing them in your sylladex. Briefly, you mull over taking your violin with you, but you decline, shutting the lacquered case and place the instrument back atop your bookshelf. “And it’s string theory, dumb shit. Particle physics is for children.”

“ _Children with abnormally high IQs, perhaps._ ”

“Cruxtruder, Downey. Get on with the explanation.”

“ _Relax, Iona. It’s not going anywhere and neither am I._ ” 

You roll your eyes and make your way toward your bedroom door, carefully stepping over strewn papers and abandoned books that make up your organized chaos. “ _It seems like the cruxtruder is one of the devices you can deploy flat out once you install the game. According to the Phernalia Registry, you can deploy the totem lathe, alchemiter, and what appears to be a—_ ” There’s an ominous crash from below, and you again pause to curse your friend under his much louder. “— _godfuckingdammit._ ”

“If my house survives your meddling,” you warn threateningly as you jog down the stairs, “I’m going to kill you.”

“ _Your endearment is as charming as ever,_ ” Matt says.

“Thank you, Downey. Finally someone who recognizes my charming personality for what it's worth. I may just keep you around for a while longer.” You pause for a minute, thinking to the foreign names your friend had rattled off. “Have you deployed everything in the Phernalia Registry yet?”

 _“Just about,”_ Matt says distantly.

“Good—”

_“—in your living room.”_

“Fucking hell Downey!”

Sure enough, as you fly down the stairs on your proverbial broomstick, you almost smack into an enormous pedestal of metal situated right in your doorframe. You can see that your couch is missing, replaced by a massive device that resembles a sewing machine of sorts. If you stand on your tiptoes, you can see over the massive metal pedestal and into the kitchen, where you can finally see your missing wall and the metal chimney that’s half in, half out of your partially demolished kitchen.

“Fucking hell…” you groan. “My mother is going to kill me.”

“I’m sure it’s not that bad—”

“Stop right there, or I’ll throttle you through your computer screen.” You set your phone atop a relatively flat metal surface and clamour over the entire device. “You’re the whole reason my house looks like a particularly mild-mannered physicist took out his gamma induced anger out on my kitchen wall, then dropped what looks like torture devices that belong in a B-grade sci-fi movie in my living room.”

 _“Kudos to the reference,”_ Matt comments. _“Now, let’s get on with it.”_

“Weren’t we supposed to have a group chat about who was taking what position as whose server and client?” you inquire as you make your way over to the kitchen.

_“We did. You were asleep.”_

You roll your eyes pointedly and say, “So who’s with whom?”

_“You’re my client, Anya is my server. Robb is her client and you’re Robb’s server.”_

“So once I retrieve my discs from the mailbox—which I will do once I do whatever this is—”

Your line goes dead as a polite voice alerts you that your “battery is low”. With a curse, you make a full one-eighty and head back to the living room, ejecting your mobile charger from your sylladex as you do so. You plug it in next to the platform of metal and leave your mobile, and return to the kitchen, a little disconcerted.

You stare up at the chimney looking object— _Cruxtruder_ , you force yourself to correct—with a raised eyebrow. It is distinctly unimpressive in the greatest of senses. It is the definition of boring. You flick it with a finger and to your surprise it rings out musically. If possible, your eyebrow shoots farther up into your hairline as the note dissipates into the air. You expected the cruxtruder to be hollow, but not hollow throughout.

Briefly you contemplate phoning Downey again, but think against it. Your mobile is in the other room charging, and you’re not in the mood to go move it to the outlet in the kitchen.

With a sigh through your nose, you turn your attention back to the cruxtruder. There is a wheel attached to the side that looks like a pressure control you would see on a submarine or similar craft. You scramble up onto the raised partition that makes up the lower section of the cruxtruder and grip the wheel in both hands. It budges beneath your ministrations, but just barely. After struggling with the infernal mechanism for what seems like eons, you’re sweating, your head is pounding, and you feel like you’re going to throw up.

“A little help would be mighty appreciated, arsehole,” you snarl out between clenched teeth.

Something pokes you incessantly in the back of your shoulder, and you pause to look over your irritated appendage. Hovering horizontally in midair is a metal staff, reared back in preparation to poke you again.

If you were your mother, she would be calling the priest for an exorcism. Luckily you are not her. You know it’s Matt doing his damndest to get your attention in the most irritating way possible.

Though, you’re certain there’s an ulterior motive to this as well.

“Strife specibus?” you inquire to thin air.

The staff inches forward in response toward your dominant hand.

“I guess I should have listened to Robb sooner rather than later.” You grab the staff. Feel the resistance it offers from the opposite end. “I think I know what you’re getting at though.”

The resistance leaves the opposite end of the staff and you nearly drop it. It’s solid metal and your muscles immediately strain to lift it. With your foot, you spin the wheel as far as it will go and wedge the staff in the gap between the cover and the body of the cruxtruder, and push down.

There is an explosion of light. The top pops off the cruxtruder like an exploding soda cap, nearly hitting you in the head as it falls belly up on the ground behind you. The light coalesces into a flickering two dimensional sphere, deep violet in colour, and you raise your eyebrows as it drops from the opening of the cruxtruder to hover above your shoulder.

“The hell…” you murmur, “is that?”

From within your sylladex, your laptop pings, and your prop the staff against the cruxtruder and remove it (miraculously without dumping everything else onto the floor).

Pesterchum is lit up like a Christmas tree. All chumhandles are aglow with activity and awareness (a rarity since you all live in different time zones and rarely have time to speak to each other before one of you is going to bed when the other is getting ready for dinner or is just starting their day). However, you pay attention to the dark red text because its owner is the one that’s trying to guide you through the game.

\-- chieflyDoctoring [CD] began pestering drunkenAstronomer [DA] at 13:43 ! --

CD: well while you were fooling around with the cruxtruder i was being productive.

DA: Define productive and I’ll tell you if you were. Breaking my skull open with the cover to this thing isn’t worth it if you were fooling around on the internet.

CD: i was fooling around on the internet. But I found a veritable goldmine of information that may help us obtain the Ultimate Prize.

CD: its a little disturbing though.

DA: Define disturbing quickly. My hand is starting to hurt.

CD: get your phone.

DA: It’s still charging.

CD: your life depends on it

\-- chieflyDoctoring [CD] ceased pestering drunkenAstronomer [DA] at 13:52 ! --

\-- chieflyDoctoring [CD] is an idle chum ! --

You would be lying if you said you weren’t put off by Matt’s cryptic attitude. You glance up at the little two dimensional floating disc as it flickers like a dying light bulb, but you pay it no mind for the time being. You decide to follow Downey’s words and retrieve your half charged mobile from the living room (right beside the platform of metal), unhook the device from the wall and recapchalogue it in your sylladex. A few seconds later, Downey’s number shows up on screen.

“Hello Dr. Cryptic,” you greet.

 _“Sorry about that,”_ he apologises.

“No you’re not.”

 _“No…”_  He pauses.  _“Yeah, you’re right. I’m not.”_

“Care to tell me why you decided to leave me with that absolutely disturbing statement?” you inquire with a glance up at the flickering object that refuses steadfastly to leave your shadow. “And what the hell this thing is?”

 _“According to this walkthrough I found on GameFAQs,”_ Matt says, _“it’s a Kernelsprite.”_

“Further elaboration would be lovely.”

_“I would love to, but I can’t. No one’s progressed farther than any of us have at the moment.”_

You roll your eyes. “That’s disheartening.”

_“Not exactly. The game is new.”_

“Alright then,” you say. “Just help me here.”

 _“According to one walkthrough, you need to “exude cruxite from the cruxtruder”,”_ Downey explains.

“Any idea on how I do that?” You tread over to the cruxtruder and study the device in its entirety. Now that the cover is open, it’s simple to peer inside and see what lies within...

Which is a big fat nothing.

You sigh through your nose and give the wheel an idle turn to the left. A mechanism shifts within the cruxtruder, and you can just barely see a hint of deep violet peek out from the lip of the device before disappearing again. Of course, you almost say. It’s so simple now that you think about it. It almost makes you slam your head against the wall for your stupidity. With a “Give me a minute,” to Matt, you place your mobile on the kitchen counter and grip the wheel with both hands.

The wheel turns easier this time under your hands and from the bowels of the cruxtruder comes a cylindrical piece of crystal _(at least, you think its crystal)._ It flies from the mouth of the device, nearly striking your Kernelsprite, and lands on the upturned lid that had capped the cruxtruder.

Without a second thought, you captchalogue the cruxite _(it has to be cruxite),_ and retrieve your mobile from the kitchen counter.

“Now what?”

 _“Ah...we worry about that countdown,”_ Matt says.

That certainly gets your attention. “What countdown?”

There is an irritating jab in your thigh and you bite out a curse. However, your attention is drawn to the base of the cruxtruder, where, sure enough, bright indigo numbers are counting down from 3:50.

“When did that start counting down?” you ask.

 _“I think when you opened the cruxtruder.”_  There’s a rustling sound and something drops beside you. _“Take the pre-punched card.”_

“Someone’s getting their boss on.”

_“Shut the hell up.”_

“There it is again.”

 _“Hold on to that thought,”_ Downey says as you go to pick up the pre-punched card. “ _You need to prototype your sprite first._ ”

You glance up at your unsuspecting kernelsprite, still flickering like a dying, ultraviolet lightbulb. “And how do I go about that,” you inquire sceptically.

“ _Just drop something into it._ ”

“Like what?”

“ _That raggedy old bear of yours?_ ”

You hesitate, unwilling to sacrifice what has been your constant irradiated companion through hell and back. You groan like a wounded animal as Downey snaps, “ _IONA!_ ” in your ear as loud as possible. Heart heavy, you rush to your room, wary of the countdown ticking off from the cruxtruder. You throw open your bedroom door and scramble under your bed, unearthing the object in question beneath layers of clothing and papers. A brief moment of hesitation passes through you, before you fling your bear into the flickering maw of your shadow.

Your kernelsprite explodes, bursting with light, blinding you before you can throw up your arms to protect your already jeopardised eyesight. You blink painfully as the glare clears, rubbing dots of colour and blackness from your eyes, and stare up at your prototyped sprite through watered lids.

It is the disembodied head of your raggedy bear as you remember it, right ear and left eye still missing, mouth grinning wickedly through softly throbbing indigo. Despite the macabre sight, you find it extremely intriguing and oddly comforting. Exhaling through your mouth, you grip your mobile tight in your hand and bring it back to your mouth.

“Tier one complete, Downey,” you say.

“ _Excellent,_ ” he says, “ _now you have to take the pre-punched card to the totem lathe._ ”

“I’m assuming that’s the upside down sewing machine, right?”

“ _Yes._ ”

You think warily back to the cruxtruder. The last you had looked at it, it had been counting down from _2:31._ Who knew how much time was left before _…_ “Is there a walkthrough that happens to mention what occurs at the countdown’s expiration?” you inquire.

Matt is quiet on the other line for a few minutes, so you take the time to trot down the stairs, prototyped kernelsprite in tow, and re-enter the living room. You grip the pre-punched card in hand, and make your way toward the totem lathe.

“ _There was one last piece on a recently submitted walkthrough,_ ” says Matt finally as you approach the lathe. “ _Sort of cryptic, but most of this is._ ”

“Get to the point, Downey.”

_“ ‘Enter before the countdown reaches zero, or death is certain.’ ”_

You raise an eyebrow, trying to fight the shiver that runs from your neck to tailbone at the words. “Any specifics?”

“ _Ah…_ ” There’s a contemplative noise from the other line. “ ‘ _Look to the skies_ ’ ”.

You don’t think as you run back upstairs, back to your bedroom, dashing for your upturned telescope. You right it and place it on its mount, wipe the lens with the hem of your shirt and jam your eye into the sight, casting the device skyward.

At first, you don’t see anything but sunlight and clouds. Then, in the distant skies, eclipsed by the sun, you spy a massive ball of fire that sends shivers down your spine. You know instinctively what that is because you’ve seen many a picture of it in astronomy textbooks and scientific journals. You don’t want to believe it. In fact, you back away slowly, lean out the window, shadowing your eyes with the flat of your palm, and cast your gaze skyward without the help of your telescope.

The little fiery dot is still there.

You return your gaze back to your telescope, training its sight back on the dot, which is growing larger and larger with each passing second. Trajectory algorithms and calculations are done in your head before you have time to blink slowly and remove yourself from your telescope a final time, mouth open in astonishment.

You cannot deny it any longer, no matter how mad it seems.

It is a meteor.

Moreover, it is coming right at you.

“Ah…Downey?” you whisper.

“ _Yeah, Cooper?_ ” he says.

You remove yourself from your telescope, unable to tear your gaze from the sun, from the fiery ball of death hurtling right at you. “I think I’m in a bit of trouble here.”

“ _What do you mean trouble? I haven’t left my computer!_ ”

“Look at your fucking screen!” You grip the pre-punched card tight in your hand, and wheel about on your heel, dashing out your door and taking the stairs two at a time.

“ _Holy—_ ”

“I know,” you growl.

“ _Is that—_ ”

“It is.” You all but slide into the living room, passingly glance at the cruxtruder— _0:42, 0:41, 0:40 (_ you had less time than you thought _)—_ and head to the totem lathe. “What do I do?”

“ _Insert the cruxite dowel between the grips and the card into the totem lathe._ ”

“What opening?” you splutter.

The annoying jab at your shoulder directs you towards a slot in the lathe at waist level, waiting for the pre-punched card to be inserted. You jam the card in right side up, listen to the pieces align automatically within the machine, and head to the sewing machine portion of the lathe. You eject the dowel from your sylladex, nearly buckle under its weight, and manage to place it on its side between the two clamps without dropping it (to your relief). _0:29, 0:28, 0:27._

You are running low on already precious time. You run to the head of the cruxtruder and spin the wheel, watching as the dowel spins like a top and a three-pronged head descends on the centre of the indigo substance. Shavings of material explode outward like confetti; you barely manage to bring your arms up to shield your eyes in time. Eventually the whirring stops; you cautiously lower your arms, staring at the shaped cruxite and brushing shavings of opaque indigo off of your sweater and out of your hair.

The cruxite no longer resembles a perfectly ordinary cylinder, but a vase, which you captchalogue as quick as you can manage and head to the alchemiter.

“ _Alright, now that you have your carved cruxite dowel,_ ” says Downey, “ _place it on—_ ”

Again his voice cuts out midsentence and that cool female voice that you are beginning to hate blandly alerts you that your battery is again low. With an annoyed curse, you glance at the cruxtruder— _0:18, 0:17, 0:16_ —and back at the alchemiter. You have no time to retrieve your charger and wait for your mobile charge enough to get Downey back on the line. Your house line is too far away. You are going to have to do this alone and in less than fifteen seconds.

You eject the carved dowel from your sylladex and place it on the small pedestal that is roughly the circumference of the largest part of the cruxite dowel. Immediately, the alchemiter reacts and a long apparatus reaches out and scans the dowel with a sweeping laser. For a moment, nothing happens. You can feel the seconds ticking down.

There is a flash of light and pop. To your astonishment, a massive indigo tree sprouts in the centre of the alchemiter, rope hanging from one crystalline branch. From the noose hangs an owl, intriguing you for a moment until the countdown’s end draws your attention back to the problem at hand.

_0:05_

You hear the soda pop snap of your newly allocated kind abstrata entering existence, appearing into your hand.

_0:04_

You grip it tight and step onto the alchemiter. You have no idea what you’re doing, but at the same time you know exactly what to do.

_0:03_

You have no idea what you’re doing, but at the same time you know exactly what to do. You swing it high…

_0:02_

Your house is shaking. The meteor is close now, close enough for its glare to peek through your windows…

_0:01_

You bring it down on the head of the cruxite shaped owl. You feel its crystalline skull crunch beneath the heavy metal of your staff, shattering into nonexistence.

_0:00_

And everything goes white.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel this was rushed, but that may just be me nitpicking. 
> 
> I am going to go back inside and redo Iona's dreams on Derse, but at a later date. Enjoy for now~
> 
>  
> 
> ==>


End file.
